This week's picks: the Singapore Symphony at Lincoln Center on Wednesday, playing Chen Yi's almost brand-new Cello Concerto as well as He Zhanhao and Chen Gang's violin concerto The Butterfly Lovers, a charming relic of the Mao Zedong era (Yo-Yo Ma and Gil Shaham are the soloists); on Thursday, the Collegiate Chorale presenting Fidelio, with the radically slimmed-down Deborah Voigt in the title role; on Thursday and Friday, the New York Collegium doing the St. Matthew Passion, with bariblogger Tom Meglioranza as Jesus; on Saturday, the Gregg Smith Singers giving a concert at St. Peter's, including Dmitri Tymoczko's brilliant self-referential cantata The Agony of Modern Music (texts by Schoenberg, Stockhausen, Babbitt, and Bernstein); and, on Sunday, three masters of Persian classical music — Mohammad Reza Shajarian, Hossein Alizadeh, and Kayhan Kalhor — performing at Jazz at Lincoln Center. I've been listening avidly to this same group's CD Faryad, and thinking about how a global definition of "classical music" benefits all parties. If the term "classical" makes people think of Kayhan Kalhor as well as Bach, I have no problem with it. The group will also be in Atlanta on March 10, Boston on March 12, Cleveland on March 18, and Chicago on March 20; details here.
